I was thinking about the spiritual life today. It’s something I know that is most important to me and my sobriety. We’re told the spiritual life is not a theory; it has to be lived. Moreover we’re told that our sobriety is based on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.
Spirituality, as I understand it, is my personal relationship with my higher power or the God of my understanding. Religion, on the other hand, is based on an agreement to practice a way of worship by a group. Religion doesn’t mean the absence of spirituality, but it is definitely different way of dealing with God. Just the very fact that it is the God of my understanding and not that of others makes that clear to me.
What is also clear to me is the matter of faith. What the difference in faith and belief is, is that I can believe in a God or a higher power but have no faith in Him whatsoever. That takes an open mind and trust. That is to me what faith is all about. What spirituality is all about. That personal connection.
None of this, in my mind, has anything to do with sanctity, perfection, or anything close to that. But it does mean to me that it’s up to me to try. That’s where the Twelve Steps come into the picture. Because it was through the process of these Steps that I was able to achieve anything close to living a spiritual life.
Driven here by sheer insanity from alcohol, I was determined never to drink again. It was this program and the Steps, which enabled me to achieve this. The spiritual life wasn’t even in the picture, when I came through these doors. But that was the solution to my drinking. Either a spiritual life or an alcoholic death. That wasn’t a hard choice for me. Anything was better than the insanity of alcohol, which had possessed me.
As a result of this program, I have had I believe a spiritual awakening. I believe I have been restored to sanity, as far as alcohol is concerned. But I also know that all my problems, my character defects, can bring about an end of my pursuit of a spiritual life, if I’m unaware and don’t do something about them. That’s where this program and the Steps come into action…or not.
I was told that we recover first physically, then mentally, then spiritually. I was also told that we can regress back to a drink in the reverse order. First the spiritual goes, then the mental, until we are literally hanging on by our finger nails.
Anyway, I was thinking about this today and the importance of spirituality in my life. It’s all about sobriety.